


If I Wasn't Afraid (I Am Now)

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki Kakashi, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, Sensei Obito
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 11:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15705885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: A role reversal of the Kakashi v Obito fight during the Fourth Great Ninja War.





	If I Wasn't Afraid (I Am Now)

The silence inside their kamui dimension was stifling. He’d never really noticed before, had always thought of it as just a peaceful spot away from Naruto’s incessant rambling, but now it felt like a blanket of thick wool stifling his breathing and pressing against the spaces where there should have been words to fill them.

Why couldn’t he think of anything to say? He had never lacked for words when they were children yet here he was standing with an open jaw and an empty mind. All he could think was _Rin would hate to see us like this_. The match to his own eye spun and glowed eerily in the other man’s skull, locked on to him like a target, and Obito wished he could cry as easily as he used to.

“Please,” he heard himself say. “Please stop this, Kakashi.”

“Do not call me that; that is not who I am. I am no one.”

“You _are_ someone! You are Hatake Kakashi. You are my _friend_!” Obito clenched his fists at both sides and narrowed his eyes. Getting angry was good. Anger he knew how to deal with and it had always been the natural state between the two of them anyway.

Instead of rising to match his temper, however, Kakashi shocked him by merely shrugging his shoulders in a careless, empty manner. “Perhaps I was once known by that name but no longer. One can only achieve true happiness by abandoning reality and ridding oneself of the memories of your comrades. You could join us, Obito. I could give you a place at my side in the perfect world that I will create.”

“That’s stupid! The hole in one’s heart gets filled by others around you, not by the stupid fantasies in your stupid genjutsu world! You’re building lies!”

“Very well. If you refuse to open your eyes then I will have to cut you down. It isn’t personal; you’re just in my way. To be honest you always were but the past is a dead thing and there is no point in revisiting it.” Kakashi shrugged and raised one hand to point at his estranged teammate. “I suppose I’ll kill you now in case you get in the way of anything else.”

Obito braced himself just in time for the other man to come flying at his face, black and red robes billowing out around him in such a way that so much material made it difficult to see where his hands were moving. Both of their Sharingan locked on to each other as he managed to block the first blow on mere instinct and then they sprang apart to come together again. Blades shone dully in the lightless dimension, aiming to sever arteries and pierce flesh while their limbs snapped out in search of bones to break.

Reluctant as he was to kill someone he had thought died almost two decades ago, Obito steeled his nerve and threw himself in to the fight with as much determination as he possessed. His entire way of life had centered around saving people, helping people, leaving no one behind who needed him, but he was faced now with a truth so hard to swallow that he nearly choked on it.

Some people were beyond saving.

Words had failed him. Reason had gotten twisted in the madness. The kindest thing to do now would be to stop Kakashi in the only way he had left: to put him down and let his soul rest in peace as it should have been doing years ago. Maybe if he finally made it to the Pure Lands he would see all of the people he had lost and forgive himself for losing them. Obito knew it was the endless deaths around him which had driven the other mad, the feeling of helpless rage and the guilt that he hadn’t been able to stop any of the madness around them. War after war, battle after battle, Kakashi’s young life had known nothing but blood since he had been pushed through an early graduation at five years old. Honestly, it wasn’t all that surprising that it had driven him to this.

It was still saddening though. Obito wondered if the scars on his heart would ever truly heal as he slammed his fist in to Kakashi’s nose and ducked under the spray of blood to go for a kidney shot, aiming to incapacitate first. The best he could hope for right now would be to deliver a quick death.

The battle felt as though it went on forever, strangely muted in this place where sound neither echoed nor carried. Kamui was a part of Obito, belonged only to him and this man bearing his other eye, but with each drop of blood spilled he could feel the taint of their actions seeping through his soul and he knew that he would never find peace in here again, no more quiet afternoons spent hiding away from his students. Jutsu and blades flew back and forth with little discretion until finally Obito looked in to Kakashi’s eyes and he knew that this was the end, that this was the clash which would see a final victor.

Even after all this time the two of them could still read each other so well. What a waste.

Kakashi’s hand wreathed itself in brilliant lightning even as Obito unsealed another of the weapons he stored along his arms, one of the many things he had learned from Kushina, but it felt as though his legs were moving in slow motion as they charged towards one another. Time dragged each second out in to several until much too suddenly, like he hadn’t even seen it coming, both of them lunged forward at the same time to pierce each other’s chests.

Raikiri slid in to his flesh like warm butter, melting through meat and bone and muscle to burst out the other side of him and crackle in a poor parody of the way they both lost poor Rin. Only the momentum of their bodies coming together forced Obito’s weapon through Kakashi’s body and, stupidly, he flinched more for how much he imagined that must have hurt his opponent than for how much he had been hurt himself in the impact. Their faces were pressed up close enough for him to stare in to the eye he had once given a friend and imagine for just a moment that he could see a shadow of regret there.

Then they were falling backwards away from each other, their bodies collapsing on the ground to bleed and heave for air.

“I don’t think I would mind dying here with you,” Obito heard himself say between gasping breaths.

“You always were sentimental,” Kakashi whispered. His pale fingers scrabbled at the pool of his own blood slowly growing around him, face twisting with determination. “I’m not finished yet. You should have gone for the kill but you always were soft, Obito. ”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re bleeding out just like I am.”

“If you think that I will allow something so minor to stop me from building the perfect world then you’re wrong. A place where there is no war, where no one dies, where no one _hurts._ Isn’t that worth any sacrifice?”

Struggling to sit upright and slowing his blood flow by flooding chakra to the area – bless Sakura for teaching him how – Obito narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What are you talking about?” They were both dying, plain and simple, yet here was Kakashi speaking as though he still had a chance at his crazy, stupid plans.

“No matter your refusal, I _will_ save you a place in the new world. You have struggled long enough in this one.”

When Kakashi looked up at him with his borrowed Sharingan swirling it didn’t really register at first what he was doing with it. It wasn’t until the air around his form warped and he began to slowly shift away from this reality that Obito gave a startled cry of dismay and activated his own Mangekyo, following on sheer instinct despite how dumb it probably was to move his body in this state.

He fell out of kamui to see the war still raging around him but Obito had eyes only for Kakashi as his once-friend appeared atop the head of the Ten-Tails. His enhanced sight was able to see even from this distance as the other man began a set of hand seals that tore at the slowing heart in his chest.

“Sensei!” Booted feet landed next to him and familiar chakra flooded in to him, tinged with Sakura’s obvious worry for his condition. “What the hell happened to you!?”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re in trouble. Go to Naruto, we’ll need him.”

“Talk to me,” his student demanded. “Tell me what’s going on! And I’m not leaving you until I’m sure you won’t keel over dead, you idiot!”

“I studied jinchūrikis with Naruto’s mother. We found legends, just old stories or so we thought. I don’t think they were just stories. Those hand signs Kakashi is making right now; we’re in for a world of trouble if they are what I think they are.”

Before his student could express her confusion over what he was rambling about they were interrupted by the sound of a desperate scream, familiar and unfamiliar to Obito’s ears at the same time. Kakashi’s voice was torn with pain and frustration and when he looked closer he was able to see another’s chakra infusing the man’s body. Or, it was for a moment before the invading chakra was easily cast off and several things happened so rapidly it was hard to believe that it all occurred in just under a minute.

The screaming stopped when Minato-sensei’s clone reached Kakashi and attacked, felling him. The Ten-Tails began to shift and change, its massive grotesque body bubbling and collapsing in on itself. Obito watched the giant creature almost seem to fold inwards around Kakashi’s form until it had created a small silver orb that hung in the sky for a few heart-pounding second and then cracked open to reveal his worst nightmares come true, nightmares that even his own imagination would never have been able to come up with.

Naruto’s horrified words reached his ears only faintly from how far away he was but Obito felt them deep in his heart where he knew the pain of this moment would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“That’s the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki!”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt.


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